THE LANGUAGE OF COLORS - MOROCCO - BY ŠPELA ŠIVIC
THE LANGUAGE OF COLORS
July 2023 - Morocco
I might have heard and seen many stories about Morocco. Yet experiencing it for real I understood what Yves Saint Laurent, who bought a cobalt blue villa in the Moroccan city and made it his vacation home in 1966 meant when saying “Marrakech taught me color. Before Marrakech, everything was black.”
As an analog photographer I have been more or less devoted to the world of black and white, as it seemed to be a media more appropriate for the things I have been exploring through my work. Of course, I have shot color too but it was never a primary media of expression.
Morocco however, has influenced the way I look through the lens in a radical way. From the first morning on, I was experiencing colors, all of their hues, shades, the combinations of them ... it was something I have never seen before. It seemed to me in a way, that nature, architecture, people, food, everything was speaking to me through colors.
And how they were changing during our trip. Not two of the places seemed to radiate the same palette. The bright, red and yellow, dusty chaos of Marrakesh through the silver green Atlas mountains, the pale ochre and turquoise desert. And the deep orange magenta skies of Fes. Oh, and the fish, the best fish I have ever eaten in my entire life, dipping them in bissara soup, oddly enough in the mountain town Chefchaouen. Like that fish, everything from the harcha street bakers’ apron to the mirror in the bathroom was somehow glittering and reflecting deep marine blue.
Detouring to Al Hosseima national park where the quietness and emptiness were talking in the combination of light pink and green, and back through the browny purple Tetouan, we reached our final destination. Bright red seemed to be united with powder blue in Tangier.
When finally, while overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar, I was trying to reflect on the past two weeks, I knew, cliche as it may sound, my gaze has been changed, perhaps forever.
